Many marketers are missing out on the possibility of greatly increasing their site's conversion rate through A/B testing the landing pages on their site.

It seems so basic, but I know from personal experience that sometimes as marketers we consider certain things to be a "given." It's easy to get wrapped up in messaging and design and all of the different channels available to us and forget to start the whole process from the first step - understanding our audience.

Especially after being in a specific industry for a bit of time, we can start to take things for granted in regards to what people are looking for or expecting in an experience with our brand. But taking the time to walk through a customer's full experience - from the specific ad she clicked to the landing page that greeted her and all the steps in between before she arrives at a final conversion stage - is invaluable. Unfortunately, whether it be due to a lack of time, resources, or just general lack of education on the issue, many marketers are missing out on the possibility of greatly increasing their site's conversion rate through A/B testing the landing pages on their site.

Landing Page Optimization Experiment

At the outset of a new product launch, an enterprise software company decided to run an A/B test on the proposed landing pages to determine which page would perform better. Performance was based on the increase in visitors who downloaded a free trial of the product upon arriving at the page. (Full disclosure: my colleagues worked with the software company on this project.)

The original version of the landing page was not designed to be an entrance point for visitors per se and relied mostly on text while offering visitors several navigational pathways to exit the conversion funnel.

The optimized landing page on the other hand was more self-contained and:

The experiment showed that the optimized landing page demonstrated a 33 percent improvement in conversion rate.

Two Copywriting Tips Gleaned From Content Experiments

Copywriting is just one of the areas that can be tweaked on a landing page to encourage higher conversion rates. Here are two tried-and-true tips from Joanna Wiebe, founder of Copy Hackers, based on her experience with split testing the copywriting aspect of landing pages:

Gain isn't as powerful as loss. Using a CTA button that says "Stop Losing Leads" is more effective than one that says "Generate More Leads."

Using "me" and "I" in CTAs works well. Check out the difference between "I'd like to join" versus "Sign up today."

Content experiments provide considerable opportunity for marketers to validate their hypotheses regarding which page elements are most effective at driving consumer action, and getting started with split testing is relatively pain free thanks to services like Unbounce and Google Analytics Content Experiments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aubrey is the director of marketing programs at Salted Stone, a digital marketing agency in Southern California. She specializes in brand strategy and inbound marketing, working with emerging tech companies and B2B providers to identify their voice and create revenue-driving content plans.

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